Hospital
by bookwormcooking
Summary: Before the Hong Kong Arc, there was an exchange of gunfire. This is the aftermath.


Sitting, propped up by pillows in a hospital bed, Asami Ryuuichi sat with cigarette smoke curling around him in the dimly lit private room. He was supposed to be sleeping which is why the blinds were drawn, but he had refused the sleeping medication and the mind numbing painkillers, ordering a local anesthetic and his cigarettes to be brought to him instead. His men patrolled the hallways and there was one stationed outside his room. Feilong might have gone back to HongKong but there were other petty bastards that would crawl out of the night hoping to catch Asami when they thought he was weak. His shoulder and arm were in a tight sling and he smoked with his free hand, the sunlight that was coming in through the blinds slanted across the shadows cast over his face. They had extracted the bullet from his shoulder and the leg wound was clean, the bullet had gone straight through. He sat utterly still in the dim room replaying the scene the night before.

He hadn't meant to reach out at the last moment. His aim wavered as he braced himself for the extra weight coming at him headlong. He had coolly calculated the situation, Akihito with his pants and shorts pulled down, hands tied behind his back, looking down the barrel of a Smithson. His mind already drew the conclusion that the boy had been raped and he had calmly raised his gun, aiming for Feilong's heart.

Then the situation had changed. Feilong had pulled the boy to him. Pulling the frightened face toward him, pushing the barrel against the pale skin, Feilong had hoped to get a rise out of his erstwhile opponent. But Asami knew the rules of the world well. Never show you opponent what you wanted because the stakes would change against your favor. He had excelled in business and the underworld adhering to that basic principle. Never show emotion

.

He knew Feilong was trapped, they both knew he would shoot, the Chinese man by now had no illusions that Asami wouldn't dare shoot him. Asami had tensed in a familiar way, his mind already speeding ahead, calculating what Feilong would do, which came down to what he could do. He had already thought that since Feilong was banking on the assumption that he wouldn't want Akihito to come to any harm he would use him as a shield. He had thought of shooting anyway, even at the price of grazing the boy to disable Feilong, but somehow his finger stopped on the trigger. He should have realized it at the point. In his line of work double guessing and hesitation was fatal. He trusted his marksmanship skills. He had been shooting a gun since he was twelve. Yet was it enough to be sure he wouldn't hit anything vital on the human shield before Feilong?. He brushed the thought aside. The ball was in Feilong's court now and he was waiting. He had considered the possibility that Feilong would throw the hostage at him and in that case he had all intention of letting the boy fall, neatly sidestepping so that he could maintain his position, while keeping Akihito from being in the line of fire. Besides it would give the Chinese man something to think about, perhaps it would insinuate that Akihito wasn't nearly as important to Asami as the Chinese mob boss had counted on. He had had full intentions of letting the boy fall. The fall wouldn't hurt him more than a possible bullet would.

Predictably Feilong launched his human shield at him and Akihito stumbled toward Asami, set off balance by the fact that his hands were tied behind his back. Predictable.

But instead of neatly sidestepping Asami made a mistake.

He looked into Akihito's eyes and saw fear there. He had no doubt that Feilong had meant to kill him before Asami appeared, suddenly his control snapped and his body shifted, but toward the wavering body rather than away. The moment he broke eye contact with Feilong, which no doubt surprised the latter as well, he unconsciously shifted his weight to receive the stumbling Akihito. Still while his body was acting out of an instinct that belied his training, his senses were still honed to follow that training, so out of the corner of his eye he saw Feilong lift his gun and aim for Akihito's back. Gripping harder on the boy's shoulder where his hand was resting, steadying him, he flung Akihito out of the way and heard a dull explosion followed by a curiously searing pain in his shoulder where Akihito had been a moment before. He looked up and met Feilong's eyes, where there was rage. A second shot came and his leg threatened to give out under him.

Pain.

Pain radiated from his shoulder and leg, but he understood pain. It was the easiest way to learn a hard lesson, and it was no stranger to Asami. He felt his leg buckle under him but even as he went down on one knee he pulled the trigger and saw that he had hit his mark as he felt the recoil of the gun in his hands and saw Feilong grunt and stagger back a few steps.

Akihito had pulled himself up, his pants still threatening to pool around his knees, trying to shuffle towards him. Stupid boy. Even as he thought that Asami felt some deep kind of satisfaction even looking back on it.

Suddenly the light flashed on and a small slender woman in a deep purple kimono glided in. He glared against the sudden light.

"It is nice to see that you are still human, but I would have preferred less dramatic evidence" she commented dryly moving toward him and neatly plucking the cigarette from his fingers, stubbing it out on an overflowing ashtray.

"Mother" he acknowledged. "There was no need for you to come"

The same golden eyes looked sharply at him from a more angular face. She was assessing the damage.

"Move back to the family house for awhile"

"I have things that I need to do"

"You're no use to the business dead" she said simply

"I won't be"

"I assume there were distractions this time?" she said changing the subject.

He recalled the image of Akihito.

"You could say that"

"You haven't been shot since you were in your twenties."

" It has been awhile then, hasn't it" he commented offhandedly.

"If you are getting sloppy, Ryuichi." she said sharply her concern creeping into her voice. She was a strong woman who raised her sons to be strong. She had tried in her own way to instill some sort of values in her sons. Her husband had been killed at what was not a young age in their world but still she pretty much commanded the respect and held the organization together for a number of years until her sons were able to take over after his death. Despite her petite frame she had once been a kendo champion and to his knowledge still practiced frequently. Ryoichi was his mirror image, the only difference was that Ryuichi had his mother's coloring which was pitch black with golden eyes and Ryoichi had the lighter hair of their father, same eyes. But then again not the same, she mused. Ryo's eyes were more likely to crinkle in good humor while his older brother's had a tendency to freeze people in their tracks like deer in headlights. Both were dangerous in their own ways but Ryu was a physical authority figure, a presence not to be trifled with; which reassured her that he was the right choice to take over, yet worried her as a mother .

Lost for a moment in his thoughts he just briefly noted that she had moved beside him. His hair was down from its normally slicked back state and to his mild amusement she raised a hand to run it through the unruly mess.

"You may be the head of the organization now, but I am still you mother and if you ever make Maki call me with news that you're in the hospital again. I will personally come and kill you. Understand?"

He let another unlit cigarette dangle from his lips and looked up at her briefly. Gold met gold and for a moment the older woman thought she saw something in those eyes that were so much like hers yet so veiled that she sometimes felt as though she were looking at a stranger despite loving both her sons fiercely.

With his hair down, and swathed in bandages, she thought he hadn't been this vulnerable since she had held him to her chest every night as an infant. Something was hollow about those eyes now, not quite a crack but an uncertainty that was dangerous. She had always told her boys to never regret what they did, to regret was to stand still and a still target was easy to hit. All of her maternal instinct screamed at her to fix that hollowness, to keep him alive and perhaps to make him happier than he was.

"Maki, told me something else."

"hmm" he said staring stolidly at the wall again, breaking the eye contact.

"There was a boy" she continued looking out over his head at the windows where the blinds were making diagonal streaks of light against the wall on which the headboard of the bed rested.

She continued when he did not respond

"The Hong Kong boss took him. Was he one of ours?" she probed gently already knowing the answer.

"No" stated her son flatly. "He was not ours. He was mine."

"I see." She said simply. She had long since known that her son was gay, in her mind it did not matter. As far as the family was concerned her younger son Ryo would leave plenty of heirs. And having told them never to regret anything, she supposed he had lived by that precept. He had never brought home his conquests, he had been discreet but not ashamed. Considering he was ranked among one of the most powerful men in Japan, no one cared if he buggered a couple of boys. She thought, abstractly amused by the thought. However, she had never been formally introduced to any of his lovers. She thought if this child was enough to put a chink in her son's armor than he was more than worth putting up the manpower to retrieve. She was going to insist on meeting this one.

Moving away to pluck and rearrange the tasteful bouquet of flowers that sat on the sideboards she asked casually, "So what is your plan"

"I'll be taking the plane and Maki will contact my men in Hong Kong."

"Hmmm" She continued to rearrange the flowers distractedly looking out the window, but neither of them was fooled into thinking that she wasn't intensely interested. He knew she was, and she knew her son knew. Turning, she placed a small, firm hand on his bare shoulder. "If you come back with any more holes in you, I am officially disinheriting you."

She continued sharply and turned toward the door. As a parting comment she added nonchalantly, "When you get back, I want to meet this young man. Don't act in haste"

With those inscrutable last words she strode out the door. For a small woman she seemed at times to have a gait that ate up the earth. Other times she would seem the perfect temptress, or even the perfect docile Japanese wife. His mother did indeed have many faces. He knew however that she was not joking about bringing Akihito to meet her.

Maki moved silently and competently to his bedside and lit the cigarette dangling from his lips, and turned off the lights, plunging the room into semi-shadow once again. He would let it go that the man had contacted his mother, this once, but the piercing gaze he shot at the retreating form conveyed that Maki was working under him and not his mother.

Despite the blood loss, which had been considerate since he had staggered up to the rooftop in what he knew to be a futile effort, Asami continued to smoke steadily in the darkened room. The occasional glimmer of gold from beneath the hooded lids of his eyes the only indication of the rapid plans and calculations moving, where his body was only momentarily incapacitated.


End file.
